Former CNN host Lou Dobbs fueled already rampant speculation about his political future Monday, sending the clearest signals yet that he's mulling a bid for president — and leaving third-party political operatives salivating over the possibility of a celebrity recruit for the 2012 campaign.

Dobbs mulls White House bid

Former CNN host Lou Dobbs fueled already rampant speculation about his political future Monday, sending the clearest signals yet that he's mulling a bid for president — and leaving third-party political operatives salivating over the possibility of a celebrity recruit for the 2012 campaign.

Less than two weeks after announcing his departure from the cable network — and after a series of interviews in which Dobbs encouraged speculation about his political plans — the anchorman known to fans as "Mr. Independent" finally made his presidential ambitions explicit on former Sen. Fred Thompson's radio show Monday.

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Asked if he might make a run at the White House in 2012, Dobbs answered flatly: "Yes is the answer."

"I'm going to be talking some more with some folks who want me to listen in the next few weeks," Dobbs told Thompson. "Right now I'm fortunate to have a number of wonderful options."

Dobbs's political future, however, remains shrouded in question marks. He has left open a variety of paths to public office — in addition to toying with a presidential campaign, Dobbs hasn't ruled out a bid for the Senate in 2012 in New Jersey — and also left his party affiliation a mystery.

A representative for Dobbs said his schedule did not permit him to comment for this story by deadline.

Though Dobbs's criticism of the Obama administration and his famously conservative views on illegal immigration have raised the prospect he could run for office as a Republican, he has staked out a rhetorical position that places him outside both parties. In 2007, he penned a book titled, "Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit," and in his final CNN broadcast, Dobbs took broad aim at a political culture "defined in the public arena by partisanship and ideology rather than by rigorous, empirical thought and forthright analysis and discussion."

And in an appearance on CNBC last week, Dobbs told Larry Kudlow that he "absolutely" planned to remain independent of a political party.

After two consecutive presidential cycles in which independent contenders had virtually no impact at the polls, independent political strategists are delighted at the prospect of a third-party campaign for the White House headlined by a high-profile, TV-friendly candidate with the potential to scramble the national political map.

"I would assume he's going independent, since he's made a very strong case that that's where he is," said Bay Buchanan, who ran Pat Buchanan's 2000 campaign for president as the Reform Party's candidate. "There's enormous movement out there, I think more so than when Pat ran. I think they've really given up on Republicans, they've given up on Democrats; so he would be stepping into something where a path had been laid."

Buchanan added: "I think he can win."

Even independent political operatives less ideologically aligned with Dobbs — Buchanan, like Dobbs, is an immigration hawk — say he represents an enormous opportunity for foes of the two-party system.

"Lou Dobbs, I think, would be a perfect candidate for us," said former Sen. Dean Barkley, the founder of the Minnesota Reform Party (later known as the Minnesota Independence Party) who managed former Gov. Jesse Ventura's successful third-party campaign in 1998. "We were hoping he would have run last time."

The notion of a cable news personality running for high office seems less far-fetched one year after former comedian and liberal talk-radio host Al Franken upset expectations by defeating an incumbent Republican senator in Minnesota, and after television stars such as MSNBC's Chris Matthews explored running for office and Fox's Glenn Beck leaped directly into political activism. Indeed, operatives say, Dobbs's talent for communicating with a national audience could serve him well as an outsider candidate.

"You know he's got a pretty good sensibility with an audience," said media consultant Bill Hillsman, who worked on third-party campaigns for Ventura and gubernatorial candidates Kinky Friedman in Texas and Chris Daggett in New Jersey.

"There aren't too many people who you can say have that particular skill on a national basis, if you're looking at independents," said Hillsman, who said he urged Dobbs in a letter to run as an independent candidate in New Jersey's 2009 gubernatorial election.